Better flow of Nabard funds

OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Chief general manager, Nabard, head office, Mumbai, R. Amalorpavanathan, at the news conference on Thursday in Guwahati

Guwahati, June 26: Nabard’s (National Bank For Agriculture and Rural Development) disbursements to Assam under the Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF) have increased because of better monitoring and co-ordination.

A few years back, the situation was pretty bad but it has improved because of better monitoring and follow-up with the state government.

The bank last year disbursed Rs 126 crore of the sanctioned amount of Rs 481 crore and this year (2014-15) it has set a target of disbursing Rs 250 crore of Rs 600 crore.

He said it was a collaborative process and both sides had worked keeping each other’s interests and priorities.

Disbursements are made after making sure that the work and other processes have started.

“We tell them the areas where funding is available for projects,” he said.

Of the total of 3,185 projects sanctioned in the Northeast under the RIDF, around 1,000 projects have been implemented.

RIDF was instituted in Nabard with an announcement in the 1995-96 budget with the objective of giving low-cost funds support to state governments and state-owned corporations to complete ongoing projects relating to medium and minor irrigation, soil conservation, watershed management and other forms of rural infrastructure.

R. Amalorpavanathan, chief general manager, Nabard, head office, Mumbai, who was also present on the occasion, spoke about the bank’s support for a public-private partnership project for a 1,440-metric tonne food processing centre with a credit and grant of Rs 76.09 lakh, which was commissioned in the West Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh under Natural Resource Management yesterday.

Four other projectsin Tawang district — fruit orchard, tribal development project, farm innovation promotion projects and a community horticulture farming project — were also sanctioned by Nabard.

On the bank’s performance in the Northeast, he said during 2013-14, Rs 172 crore was disbursed under investment credit, Rs 216 crore under production credit and Rs 56 lakh under new business initiatives besides Rs 971 crore sanctioned and Rs 558 crore were disbursed under the RIDF to states of the Northeast.

He said there would be collaborations with small farmers’ agri-business consortium for setting up of producers’ organisations and with National Dairy Development Board for a dairy programme.